Key Principles To Follow While Organizing
- Set realistic attainable organizing goals- how long was the clutter allowed to pile up? For some, it was years. You can’t organize year’s worth of clutter in one day. So, work on reducing the clutter space by space or room by room. Remember finish one space completely before jumping onto the next. You’ll quickly get overwhelmed if you don’t.
- Be conscious of your daily habits. In order to maintain a clear space, there has to be daily toss time and daily “put things away” time. This doesn’t have to take hours- 15 minutes max. Purging and daily maintenance are equally important. One without the other doesn’t exist when you’re first starting to organize.
- Overwhelm- it happens to everyone. This is one of the biggest reason why people hire organizers. We don’t get overwhelmed because we know how to take you from start to finish. To prevent overwhelm stick to these simple rules. Don’t start more than one project at a time and complete a small project before tackling a larger one. Only bite off what you can realistically chew. Organizing your master closet is different than organizing the whole basement for a renovation project.
- Don’t know where to start? Most people think they have to buy organizing products, build built in shelving or reconfigure a closet to get the results they want. That thinking couldn’t be more wrong. Start first with purging. Then you’ll know what you have to store and organize. Grab 2 garbage bags- walk around the cluttered room or space filling one with trash, one with donations. Be sure to take out the garbage and donations when finished. Leaving it lying around will make matters worse. The room may not be organized when you’re done but it will be less cluttered and inspire you to declutter other areas as well.
- Want to keep everything? Decide first, what you want the space to look like when you’re done- would getting rid of half the stuff be enough to get it where you’d be pleased ? Would twenty percent clear enough clutter to help you better utilize the space? Be strict now and decide to clear that much stuff in order to attain your desired outcome. Without setting a precedence in the beginning you’ll never get rid of the stuff while looking at it. For example, if you want to make your spare office into a nursery, decide what will be necessary to make that happen. Let those necessities drive your decision making then with getting rid of things.
- Organizing products- don’t buy any. Organizing products are fun and neat looking but they won’t do you a lick of good unless you organize first and then buy only what you need. In most cases, we buy a lot less, after organizing first.
